Christian Lemmerz
13 Sep - 13 Oct 2007
CHRISTIAN LEMMERZ
"The Omen"
Leo Koenig Inc. is pleased to announce the opening of a solo show by German artist Christian Lemmerz, entitled, “The Omen." Trained as a sculptor, Christian Lemmerz has worked with many different mediums, choosing materials according to their potential for making statements, and implementing his particular artistic strategies. Throughout his career, he has incorporated drawings, set designs, installations and films into his practice.
For his show at Leo Koenig Inc., Christian Lemmerz has created a series of works that implicate the viewer in a world that is unrelentingly moribund. Anchored by large sculptures made from white marble, Lemmerz employs the figure to anthropomorphize our most basic fears. With titles such as “Abu Ghraib” and “Katrina,” he confronts his audience with their own collective consciousness of present day terror, literally etched in stone. Lemmerz has stated in previous conversations that art has to operate in a profoundly disturbing way "like some smoldering danger where provocation entails confrontation.” To this end, Lemmerz succeeds in these aims with his current exhibition “The Omen.”
The choices of so-called "classical" materials like marble and bronze help convey both the gravitas and absurdity of these fears. Though these materials have been deemed classical, Lemmerz perceives them as "contaminated". According to the artist, they represent among other things, kitsch, history and myth. The theatricality of these sculptures, some of which appear as tomb sculptures, blatantly critique our present day obsession with public displays of intense mourning, inevitably giving way to cowering fear where victims become symbols for political folly. The sculptures both negate the tawdry spectacle of national hysteria, and memorialize the absence of real grief, highlighting the requisite national amnesia that inevitably follows suit.
Christian Lemmerz work has been included in numerous exhibitions, most recently a solo show at Horsens Kunstmuseum and is notably a part of the collection at The National Gallery of Art, Copenhagen, and the Saatchi Collection, UK.
He was born in Karlsruhe, Germany and now lives in Denmark.
"The Omen"
Leo Koenig Inc. is pleased to announce the opening of a solo show by German artist Christian Lemmerz, entitled, “The Omen." Trained as a sculptor, Christian Lemmerz has worked with many different mediums, choosing materials according to their potential for making statements, and implementing his particular artistic strategies. Throughout his career, he has incorporated drawings, set designs, installations and films into his practice.
For his show at Leo Koenig Inc., Christian Lemmerz has created a series of works that implicate the viewer in a world that is unrelentingly moribund. Anchored by large sculptures made from white marble, Lemmerz employs the figure to anthropomorphize our most basic fears. With titles such as “Abu Ghraib” and “Katrina,” he confronts his audience with their own collective consciousness of present day terror, literally etched in stone. Lemmerz has stated in previous conversations that art has to operate in a profoundly disturbing way "like some smoldering danger where provocation entails confrontation.” To this end, Lemmerz succeeds in these aims with his current exhibition “The Omen.”
The choices of so-called "classical" materials like marble and bronze help convey both the gravitas and absurdity of these fears. Though these materials have been deemed classical, Lemmerz perceives them as "contaminated". According to the artist, they represent among other things, kitsch, history and myth. The theatricality of these sculptures, some of which appear as tomb sculptures, blatantly critique our present day obsession with public displays of intense mourning, inevitably giving way to cowering fear where victims become symbols for political folly. The sculptures both negate the tawdry spectacle of national hysteria, and memorialize the absence of real grief, highlighting the requisite national amnesia that inevitably follows suit.
Christian Lemmerz work has been included in numerous exhibitions, most recently a solo show at Horsens Kunstmuseum and is notably a part of the collection at The National Gallery of Art, Copenhagen, and the Saatchi Collection, UK.
He was born in Karlsruhe, Germany and now lives in Denmark.